Luxury Performance Sedans

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I wouldnt want it. How long will it actually look good? Silver does not like being exposed to oxygen, let alone rain, snow, road salt, etc, or in the desert, a sandstorm would make short work of the finish. I'll keep plain ole paint, thanks.

A solid gold car sounds great, expect it would weigh as much as a tank, and drive like crap.

Count me as one who surely is not drooling.Washing the car is bad enough. Imagine having to use tarnish remover also due to the sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide pollutants in the air.No thanks. Silver paint will do just fine.

One would think with all the electronic sophistication of my 2005 545, the clock would have been able to adjust for standard time but it didn't.Anyone out there with a recent Lexus, Acura, Mercedes Benz, Infiniti or Audi have a clock that did adjust.Just curious....

My 2005 A6 didn't change either. Pretty bad that a simple clock or computer can change but the sophisticated LPS's can't. It would take less than 200 kb of data to program this, and it can be placed somewhere in the MMI where it can be set as "follow daylight savings time" or "don't follow daylight savings time".

Did not adjust automatically, because nowhere does the (non-ML, non-nav) system know the date. However, it does have one button that just flicks between daylight and standard time, so it doesn't take any fiddling.

Somebody sent me an e-mail regarding gas prices and it showed the photographs of the private residence of the former President of United Arab Emeritus and ruler of Abu Dhabi...the series of amazing photos also showed his front plaza which featured about 20 cars... mostly Roll Royces and BMW's but one of them was a Silver Audi A8 and it was NOT silver in color...it was made of SILVER!!!

Well, since this was an A8 and not an A6, I posted these pictures on the High End Luxury Marques forum. Here's the link:

Makes sense that solid silver would be a porter's nightmare.... but I thought a billionaire could use it just for show...but as it turns out...it is aluminum!!! ... I did a little google search and found the pictures and some interesting description as well! http://www.mtm-online.de/en/highlights_audi_a8d3_poliert.html#

mtm Audi A8 D3 Polished

In Dubai the mtm Audi A8 polished was the eye-catcher. The car was analysed and in many studies the enamel varnish of the aluminium car body was removed. Furthermore the car was cleaned. After that, the car body was polished with fine abrasive paper as well as special polishes to high gloss. The blank dress must not have any defects, because of the fact that retouching was not possible. Finaly the car was protected with special clear varnish against enivornmental impacts.Because of the fact that it is impossible to polish plastic parts like front- and rearspoiler, mirror house, side sillboard or also fuel tank cap, they were enameled in a complex way to get a chrom effect. Finaly they were polished with clear varnish.

Anyone out there with a recent Lexus, Acura, Mercedes Benz, Infiniti or Audi have a clock that did adjust. Just curious....

My '00 CLK430 and '03 SL500 both automatically adjusted the time displayed on the navi screen. As a matter of fact, if you happened to be in the car at the appropriate time you'd see the time change at 2:00AM.

Mercedes did not accomplish this through date analyzing software though. The time change took place because the time is derived from the satellites. Using this method, the time also automatically changes when you cross time zones.

Neither my G35 Coupe or M45 Sport automatically change. Like the Lexus mentioned by an earlier poster, you have to turn off the Daylight Savings Time setting.

With the possibility of DST dates being changed by Congress, reliance on software that incorporates date algorithms may not be a good thing.

The Toyota Avalon is an amazing marketing package that will get the attention of many potential customers.

I have already seen the ads ---"High HP combined with good gas mileage"0 to 60 in so and so many seconds!

Ads emphasizing the above points will make the Avalon as hot as a seller as the new upcoming Sony PS3 systems! In fact the Avalon makes the Lexus ES330 redundant(unless having your car seviced at Lexus makes a big difference to you)!

BUT one thing should remain clear and that is the Avalon is more of a "fast FWD Buick cruiser" than a LPS!

The Infiniti M which BTW is the best in it its class can be ranked as the most reliable based on current data obtained and statistical analysis of the engine which is at the heart of its performance. The engine in the M for the V6 is the ubiquitous 3.5 liter Nissan FM platform which has the most Wards 10 best V6 engine awards ever and the V8 engine is also not new having been used in the Q45 and previous M. I look at it this way. If you have a fundamental bias against the M it will be obvious from the nitpicking noticed in the forum arguments. What is clear now is that no car will lead this class of vehicles forever and clearly Infiniti has decided that the driver is the most inportant determinant of how well a vehicle drives and the car revolves around the driver achieving supremacy on the road. The bar has been raised and Infiniti has clearly decided to be a leader in this field. This lead will not be challenged on forums like this but on the road. Consumers have been voting with their checkbooks and will continue to do so.

The point I was making is that the Avalon and Infiniti M are for very different people. Nobody that likes the ride of an Avalon is going to enjoy an M45 Sport, and no M driver is going to like the cushy ride and numb steering of an Avalon. The GS is still sportier than the Avalon, but its a lot closer to it than the M, which is one of the most agressive sedans in the LPS class.

"If you have a fundamental bias against the M it will be obvious from the nitpicking noticed in the forum arguments..."

As opposed to having a rather zealous bias for the M, I assume.

"...the car revolves around the driver achieving supremacy on the road..."

Supremacy? Did you really type that, or did a former Haig aide edit after you posted? :P

The M is an improvement over its previous iteration (which was ugly, u-g-l-y, and it din't ha' no alibi), but the key point for the car, like the G, is merely punch for price. It's a value. A nice one at that. That doesn't afford it superlative status by any means, IMO.

I have a 2006 530xi and the clock DID change automatically. There's a setting in iDrive that says something like "Auto adjust for daylight savings" and if that is checked then it works fine. Maybe you have an older version of iDrive (2005 vs 2006) or you just don't have it checked.

The M has an On/Off toggle for DST in one of its menus (Navigation or Settings or something). As an early post stated, it may be better to have a manual adjust rather than an auto adjust given that the DST dates are going to change. Nobody has to fiddle with any software or firmware when the dates change.

Finding the toggle took five minutes, however (flipping it only a sec or two).

its easier for a nav system to be able to do DST changes than non nav cars because nav cars are communicating with the outside world, the non nav cars have this stupid clock with a chip that was designed in 1982... and sells for about 10 cents.

the reason i compared the avalon and M was because they were sitting right next to each other in the parking lot and it struck me that their basic shapes were so uncannily similar, except the M had lots of oddly placed glaring chrome and was narrower than the avalon. you couldn't pay me to buy most toyota's or lexuses only because i like firmer sportier drive and that puts me in a minority. if i loved even slightly softer drives and was a little blind to blandness, lexuses would be king of the world.

anyway, there have been some who came to this forum in the distant past asking about cross shopping a base M against an avalon and i know a couple of my friends did that cross shopping too. one of them eventually went with a fully loaded 545 and the other bought a M45 but had the car sent to a speciality shop that reduced the ugly chrome excess on the car and i think the car looks phenomenal with the darkened accents.

one of the reasons i'll not consider audi or VW brands anymore is because the company is partly owned by a state goverment in duetchland.... but yet, those cars look delicious.

i think RL designers were blinded by the success of the TSX and TL and went down the wrong slippery slope.

These LPS' are so sophisticated, one would expect the clocks would be programmed to change for standard and daylight savings times.I was kind of disappointed that my E60 wasn't.Good to see you got the M35! Enjoy it!

Thanks. I sure will look!Just have to put on my decontamination suit as I attempt to go deep down into the bowels of the dreaded but incredibly easy to use iDrive!

5 minutes later:Nope! I can't set my clock for daylight savings/standard time.My vehicle is a 2005 E60. Good to see the 2006's have the setting.Knew I should have waited for the 2006 models!Doh!! :sick:

one of the reasons i'll not consider audi or VW brands anymore is because the company is partly owned by a state goverment in duetchland

Interesting reason! I never heard that one before!

And I am not going to dispute your reasoning because politics is beyond the domain of this forum!

But indirectly the Lower Saxony Government share of VW ownership does have a negative impact on the company. Also the majority of the VW Board of Directors are either senior union members or government bureaucrats. Such a combination would be a disaster for any company!

It is such a disaster that I believe it affects the product planning of Audi/VW. I am miffed that I cannot buy an Audi A3 with the features that I want:

A manual Audi A3 2.0 sold only as a non-Quattro version! Why is it so difficult to have a Quattro version?

A A3 3.2 Quattro sold without a manual tranny! Why is it so difficult to equip their more sporty 3.2 version with a manual tranny?

Such limited feature-availability is unheard of in the non-Government shareholder-owned company called BMW. Although I am miffed that the there is not a 330xi version of the 3 series Touring!